Indigenous teachers’ experiences of the implementation of culture-based mathematics activities in Sámi school

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The goal of Indigenous education is that it should be approached on the
basis of the Indigenous language and culture; this is also the case with Sámi
education. The Sámi School Board has stated that all teaching in Sámi schools should
be culturally based, despite the fact that Sámi culture-based teaching is not specifically
defined. Therefore, teachers themselves must adapt the teaching and as a result,
usually no Sámi culture-based mathematics teaching takes place. The aim of this
article is to discuss Indigenous teachers’ experiences with designing and implementing
culture-based mathematics activities in Sámi preschool and primary school. The
teachers’ work with culture-based mathematics activities took the form of Sámi
cultural thematic work with ethnomathematical content, Multicultural school mathematics
with Sámi cultural elements, and Sámi intercultural mathematics teaching.
Culture-based mathematics activities took place within an action research study in the
Swedish part of Sápmi. Sápmi comprises northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland, as
well as the Kola Peninsula in Russia. In the action research study, six teachers
conducted culture-based mathematics activities in preschool and primary school on
the basis of the action research loop “plan-act-observe-reflect.” During the study the
teachers changed from a problem-focused perspective to a possibility-focused
culture-based teaching perspective characterised by a self-empowered Indigenous
teacher role, as a result of which they started to act as agents for Indigenous school
change. The concept of “decolonisation” was visible in the teachers’ narratives. The
teachers’ newly developed knowledge about the ethnomathematical research field
seemed to enhance their work with Indigenous culture-based mathematics teaching.